Some of the emails between Lehman execs are laughable — naive, silly, hubristic, childish.

But my favorite piece simply has to be the Morgan Stanley research report from June 30 2008 “Overweight Rating” on Lehman Brothers — “Bruised, Not Broken, Poised for Profitability“. 60 days later, Lehman Brothers filed what was thent he largest bankruptcy in the United States. This is (literally) what the category “Really Really Bad Call” was invented for.

Who was the author of this steaming piece of shit, and where is he today? Why, he is Patrick Pinschmidt, and he is a Senior Policy Advisor at U.S. Treasury Department! (You could not make up stuff this un-fucking-believable even if you tried).

Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

And this is with Einhorn (Greenlight) running around all over the place making presentation on Lehman’s problems. Not that Einhorn was flawless (he was on the board of New Century), but I do not recall of any rebuttal from LEH of any substance…

We are a nation governed by dysfunctionality. Patrick Pinschmidt (oh, lord, help me to not simply tee off on his freekin‘ name), is obviously clueless to the point of criminality, but even knowing that and being able to prove it beyond any doubt isn’t enough to keep him out of government. What kind of position would call for hiring someone who specializes in such ignorant fuckery? Oh, yeah — Senior Policy Advisor, U.S. Treasury.

Yep – Patrick Pinschmidt is the poster boy for the average government employee – clueless and stupid as hell but living large on the slaves (excuse me – taxpayer’s) dime.

Hey Petey – we’re not doomed – it’s easy to make a living when all ya gotta do is be smarter than some idiot like “Patrick Pinschmidt”. Really – my encounters with federal government employees is pretty much like a keystone cops movie – they run all around and only find a problem when they trip over it or it bites them in the ass.

Barnes & Noble popped 51.68% today on news of a an MSFT $300 mln investment into a joint vehicle with the Nook and BKS’s content in mind. A desktop version of the Nook will appear on the Windows 8 desktop.

As best I see in a street tool, the news was announced at 9:30 and BKS popped from a prior 13.35 to over 25. The first two candlesticks are red and down steeply to 22.31 so I think it’s fair to say that someone knew in advance. BKS finished the day at 20.75 and in after-hours trading it’s down by 3 cents – so not a whole lot. Be interesting to see what happens tmw. Down – but by how much.

Reading around quickly there may be some decent business logic to the hookup. The wedge may be e-book version of academic books where BKS may compare favorably to AMZN. Obviously MSFT wasn’t going to do this with AMZN.

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About Barry Ritholtz

Ritholtz has been observing capital markets with a critical eye for 20 years. With a background in math & sciences and a law school degree, he is not your typical Wall St. persona. He left Law for Finance, working as a trader, researcher and strategist before graduating to asset managementRead More...

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